by Peter Bowen
I wasn’t there but I got told later one November day close on to the end of the month a short, blustery little captain name of Fetterman showed up to his new post, and hadn’t taken his coat off before he started bellering that if he had eighty men he would ride through the whole Sioux nation.
Captain Brown wanted to scalp Red Cloud himself.
Lieutenant Grummond felt the Sioux were the poorest cavalrymen he’d ever seen.
I never met any of them, but I was to see them die.
Bridger and me had wandered west. He’d been paid up and he gave me half of it, even as I protested that I hadn’t earned it and I didn’t need it anyway.
“Wul,” says Bridger, looking out in the distance, “you been an endless and amusing comfort to an old man, kept me from boredom many a time. Ain’t laughed so hard since I cain’t remember. Arful good for my kidneys and digestion.” I assumed he meant the twinkle and little shake of the shoulders that signified Jim Bridger was having a hard attack of mirth.
“Thank you,” I said, hefting the pouch of gold coins. “I don’t know how to repay you but I will have something occur over time. You can count on it. I promise.”
“No doubt,” says this lovely old goat. “I’ll be watchin’ fer it.”
The Wind River Range was high on our right. We come to a huge village of Shoshones, and Bridger went on in with me behind, and we come to a teepee had a big old man with long white hair and a smile like half the moon. We slung down and Bridger and the old man commenced to rattling back and forth in English, chaffing each other over a hundred bygone misadventures. I’d never heard Bridger laugh loud, but he done so now.
Finally, Bridger put a hand on my shoulder, and he commented that I was learnin’ the scout’s trade, that Bridger had never seen anyone so dumb learn so little so slowly, that I liked to fuck turtles, that there was warrants for me back East for this or that felony, that when I robbed banks I dumped the gold out of the sacks to lighten ’em so as not to hamper my escape, and that any warrior would likely kill me with a rock ’thout taking his mind off serious matters, but the Bible says love the hopeless and Bridger had never seen a challenge to compare with me.
The tall old man twinkled through all of this. Then he stuck out a big, gnarly paw and shook my hand.
“This here’s Washakie,” said Bridger, introducing me to one of the greatest men the world has ever known, “and this is Luther. He’s even less than he looks.”
“Big Throat has great regard for you,” said Washakie.
“I don’t know how I survived that there regard,” I said.
“Ya get old in yer dotage and ya get merciful,” said Bridger. “It’s sad but there’s no escapin’ it.”
“My wives have supper for us,” says Washakie. “We can lie and eat, too.” He led us into his lodge.
I shoveled buffalo stew in my mouth and listened to these two old monsters most of the night.
7
WASHAKIE WAS CLOSE ON to seventy when I met him, maybe ten years or so older than Bridger. He was a good six inches taller than Jim and broad-shouldered and he moved hale and graceful as a strong man of thirty. Just how hale the old bastard was I would find out shortly.
We crawled into his lodge and spread ourselves out on buffalo robes and Washakie tamped a long pipe’s bowl full of tobacco mixed with sweet herbs and he and Bridger passed it back and forth. It was obvious that they held each other in great esteem and they spent about an hour remembering particularly hilarious times they had enjoyed as wild youths running around the mountains looking for beaver, both kinds. I found it uncommon dull and I fidgeted and yawned and finally allowed as how I was going to stretch my legs and rest my ears, which had been taking a windy beating. I did not fail to appreciate all this that they were saying and I marveled at its truth, I went on, and I would stay but for some reasons goddamned lies made me sneeze. I sneezed a couple of times to make my point.
I knew I’d set these two old buzzards to hunting for a way to play a joke or two on me and I was just mad enough to make a fight of it.
Bridger allowed as how it was a splendid idea I go for a walk and I ought to do it in such a manner as the horses was all cared for and all our gear ended up in the next lodge over.
It took me a couple of hours to curry the horses down and clean their hooves and such. The lodge we was assigned to was a big one, full of robes and thick with the scent of burning sweet grass. There was a nice kettle of dog stew bubbling on a low fire of aspen coals and a bowl of wild strawberries all cemented over with cheap pale brown trade sugar.
I et some of the stew and chiseled out a few chunks of strawberries and sugar and sort of scratched myself reflectively and thought that I’d last had a bath in the summertime but I couldn’t recall exactly when.
I fetched some clean possibles from my bags and a chunk of lye soap and I wandered down to the river and up it, looking for a private place to bathe. I must have walked for three or four miles. It was a late and very hot summer day—hard to believe it had been snowing up high in the mountains just a couple weeks before—there was dragonflies clacking past over the water and blackbirds gargling away in the cattails.
The water was cold, and I shivered a bit in it and stood up and lathered up good and scrubbed my body and then my face with a rag. I rinsed off and stood up, my eyes prickling, and the sun warmed me pretty good and quickly.
In most of these tales this is where the beautiful Injun maiden shucks her clothes off on the bank and comes paddling out to disport herself with the brave scout, on water and on land. Hear Jim Beckwourth tell it he couldn’t take his clothes off without some fair maiden leaping passionately upon him and entwining her slim limbs with his whereupon they flatten the grass and knock over small trees in the heat of their passion. After several hours of reckless landscape gardening she takes him home to Daddy, who promptly resigns the chieftainship and hands it over to Jim, who to hear him tell it was chief of a whole lot of tribes at the same time, even if they’d been happily cutting each other’s nuts off for centuries.
Now, all that’s wrong with that story is that most Injun maidens is as shapely as paving bricks, and damn few tribes had or wanted a chief. Injuns was true democrats, couldn’t get the same opinion from three of them two times running and most war councils was about as orderly as payday at the post saloon.
Luther Kelly’s luck was holding steady and some different from Jim Beckwourth’s, for when my eyes cleared I saw two grim-looking gents packing up my clothes into a bag, which they then set on.
“Good afternoon, brother,” said one. “This here’s Elder Olson and I is Elder Olsonson and we is here to bring you the word of God.”
Beckwourth gets a piece of tail, I get the goddamn Mormons.
“Much obliged,” I says. “Now if you’ll be so good as to get yer asses off my clothes then we’ll chat while I’m dressing.”
“We all has to stand naked before the Lord on Judgment Day,” says Elder Olsonson.
“I don’t got to stand naked before a couple of fools in August,” I snarls, stalking up to the bank. I picked up a handy club.
“Please just listen to us,” says Elder Olson, whipping out a handy Navy Colt.
“Can’t think of a thing I’d rather do,” I says.
“How much do you know about the word of God,” says Elder Olsonson.
“Not a damn thing,” I says, “but being from a good Catholic home any time God wants to drop in and speak his piece I’ll listen if I ain’t too busy doing something useful.”
“We’s the Mormons,” says Olson. “And we bring you the work and word of our prophets Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.”
“My grandfather Teignmouth knew Joseph Smith and he said he was a ninny and a man couldn’t go to town without that fool busting in the house and knocking holes in the walls looking for treasure. Grandfather Teignmouth took a poor view of the man and marched him to jail twice.”
“Hunnnnnh?” they said.
“Smith abou
t ruined half the houses around. He was famous for it. After a while, he started looking into his hat and he claimed he found gold plates in it. I did a little arithmetic and figured his hat weighed eight hundred and twenty pounds. I’d have admired to see his shirt collar if he actually wore it ...”
“We are wasting our time,” said Elder Olsonson, the brighter of the two. “This one is past saving.”
They got up off my clothes and I dumped the things out and handed them the sack.
“You’ll need this,” I says. “Your best bet is to kidnap infants and make sure they never learn how to read.”
A bright and evil light went on in my brain.
“But I know a feller who has much trouble in his life and who said just this morning he longs for the Word of God,” I says.
Well, you’d have thought I had just come up with a six-hour sermon and a hard bench to set on while listening to it. They looked hopeful.
“Even the heathen may bring some folk to the light,” says Elder Olsonson. “Where is this wandering soul.”
“Over to Washakie’s camp,” I says.
(Washakie was always very nice to the Mormons. He told me they was such pitiful damn fools that no grown man should treat them any worse than you would other congenital idiots. “They must belong to the Great Spirit,” said Washakie, “and I wish He’d come get them.”)
Well, you may well imagine how good I felt leading this brace of morons back to Washakie’s lodge and shoving them in the door. I then lit out like a fox with its tail on fire because I suspicioned what was going to happen next. I was a good two hundred yards away by the time Olson and Olsonson’s narrow little eyes opened far enough to see the convert.
“Bridger the Antichrist!” they bellered, loud enough to blow the hair off a passing dog.
They come boiling out of Washakie’s lodge, looking one way and another for me, and both with their guns out. The world ain’t seen such devoted missionaries since Cortes slaughtered half of Mexico.
Right behind them come Bridger, bellering, too. “WHEN I FIND YA YA ROTTEN POXY PIECE A SKUNK SHIT I’LL FEED YA TA THE GODDAMN ANTS. I’LL MAKE A CAP SACK OUTA YER BALL BAG.” I figured he was talking to me.
The Church Militant was splitting up the better to cover more ground and the West’s Greatest Scout was staring hard at the dust reading my sign and it warn’t three seconds before Bridger was loping down my trail, even though there was thousands of footmarks to choose from.
I whipped off my boots and ran back to the edge of the camp, carefully keeping a lodge between me and Bridger, who was listing at the top of his lungs all the horrible things he was going to do to me and sounding damn earnest about it, too. His temper weren’t being helped by the Elders trying to convert him as he stalked me.
The din was something. I was proud of it, if I got away.
I dived in the door of a lodge two down from the one we was staying in, hoping by sign language to explain my presence, but it was empty and so I burrowed deep under a pile of buffalo robes. I was tired and I decided to take a nap.
How long I slept I can’t tell. I was woke up by someone sitting on me. The someone didn’t weigh very much, and then she began to sing. She had a lovely, clear voice, and the song was a Scottish lament I’d heard as a child.
I thought I’d leave about then, and when I slithered off I caused her seat to drop about eight inches, suddenlike. She gave off a little hum, rising at the end to a question, and commenced peeling back the robes.
She peeled back the last robe and saw my face grinning up at her. Most girls would have shrieked—white ones, that is—but she just smiled and put her hand to her mouth and laughed. The light coming through the doorway was behind her, and her hair gathered the sunlight. I thought she had the most beautiful face I had ever seen.
She started rattling away at me in sign, telling me that Big Throat was very angry with me. Good, I signed back. Sour Faces mad, too, she signed, dogs bit them.
We talked with our fingers for a long long time and I’d have been happy to go on till dark. I couldn’t take my eyes off this girl.
She went out for a bit and came back and come to me. Where’s Bridger?
Left hours ago.
“What?” I said. For truth to tell I hadn’t made any plans other than follering Bridger around. I wiggled out under the back of the lodge, pulled my boots on, and went looking for Jim. He was gone without so much as a wave. I sat down, stunned, and I sniveled and thought I’d catch up to him and apologize. I’d beg him not to leave me go, is what I’d do.
Once, some years later, I come across a grizzly cub—year and a half old, maybe—digging roots with his mother in a high meadow. The mother stood up and looked at Junior like she’s never seen him before. She started walking away and the little bear ran after her and she half turned and whacked him ass over tip about sixty feet. The little bear was more puzzled than hurt and he chased back to mother who gave him a roundhouse would have broke the neck of an ox. The little bear tried a few more times and it sunk in that he was unwelcome. The sow went over the hill, and the cub sat on a log at the edge of the meadow and bawled.
I sat on a stump in the brush and cried and sniveled and drowned in the sorrowfuls for my poor self. All right, goddamn these treacherous shitheels, I’d show ’em. I’d go get my traps and ride north where the varmints could eat me, and to hell with them.
Here I was, on the run from the law, a deserter from the army, in a camp full of Injuns I didn’t know, halfway to hell and I could see it from here if I climbed a tree. I’d put up with these treacherous, overbearing turds and I had at all times been respectful and then it occurred to me that I seemed to be handed off from one adopted uncle at fairly regular intervals, and there was a small possibility that I was such a pain in the ass that they had had all they could stand.
But I was going to damn well leave. I walked back to the camp and full of the woe and perplex I hauled my saddle and such out of Washakie’s guest lodge and got my horses and commenced slowly to pile all my goods on the packhorse. My tail had one hell of a droop to it, I am remembering.
While I was checking the ties I almost sobbed. I turned and took a step and ran straight into Washakie, who had drifted over silent as smoke.
“Stands-in-the-Fire-and Argues,” Washakie says, with as infernal a grin on his face as Spotted Tail’s. “Do you think of leaving? Of running? I would not have thought the son of Big Throat was so fish-hearted.”
“That old bastard ain’t my father!” I snarled, my voice busting so the last part sounded pretty soprano.
“Yes he is,” said Washakie. His black eyes were twinkling. They were the most intelligent eyes I had ever seen, or would. I thought that those eyes knew things about me I couldn’t even guess at.
“Where will you go,” Washakie asked, sounding concerned, his soft deep voice on my young ear like home.
“Jackson’s Hole, maybe.”
“Pretty place,” said Washakie. “Lots of snow. I don’t think you’d better go there. Maybe you should take your fish heart east and grow turnips. Turnips don’t have teeth and they can’t run or fight.”
“I am not a farmer,” I said, big and brave, my voice cracking and my dignity crumbling like a cutbank in the spring.
“Some of my young men called me an old woman last night,” Washakie went on. “They want to go to war. The young men always want to go to war, and when they do some die and the others come back much older. After that first time they don’t want to go to war so badly.”
So Washakie would take his young men off to fight somebody, I thought. It ain’t anything for me.
“Your father said I should teach you to make war,” he went on. “So we will go off and fight the Crows and Blackfeet. Big Throat said you weren’t much. Let us see how much.”
“That pumpkin-throated son of a bitch,” I yelled. “He ...”
Washakie hit me sort of casual-like on the top of my hat with his open hand, driving my hat down to where the brim w
as on my collarbones and most of my neck down in my lungs. My feet was swept out from under me and when I put my hands out to catch myself as I fell I just grabbed air till I hit. There was a light touch at my throat. Washakie’s foot. The foot went away and there in the prison of my Stetson I reflected that if this was a real fight I’d have a crushed windpipe. I’d be dead. Washakie had put forth about as much effort as he would swatting a horsefly.
I got my hat off finally, though the silk lining had been torn away from its moorings and hung haybellied out from the sweatband. My ears had lost skin and the wind stung them. I looked at Washakie, white-haired, old, standing there smiling with his twinkling eyes.
“A warrior would kill you with his hands,” said Washakie. “A warrior would not waste a rock on you. He wouldn’t take your weapons, he wouldn’t take your scalp, he would not spit on your dead body. Big Throat was drunk when you found him, yes? He’d eaten bad mushrooms? His horse threw him on his head? Shit.”
My eyes started leaking tears. My lower lip was trembling and I was about ready to bawl. Then I felt a sudden hot flush of anger in my belly and it ran out to my fingertips and the soles of my feet in no time. I could feel myself swell.
“I don’t know nothin’ about it,” I said to Washakie. “But I learn quick and believe me I’ll pay right close attention.” I wanted to go for this old monster’s throat with a part of me, and a part of me wanted his nod.
“I ain’t very old,” I hissed, “and my education’s been a bit neglected in some matters. Right now, I’d study hard enough just so I could break your goddamned neck.”
Washakie threw back his head and laughed and laughed and bellered and bellered till the tears run down his face. Each time his eye fell on me he went off into another fit. I must have cut a sorry, scrawny sight, though at the time I couldn’t see it.
“You want to play a game?” roared Washakie. “Run. Take all your guns and run for a day, and I’ll follow with only some salt from the Bitter Lake, for the rabbits I catch with my hands. Who lives, wins. Well?”
